Books you "should" love, but just don't

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:- Into Thin Air
- The Shack
- In the Woods (though I did feel seen by a recent thread about this book)
- We Need to Talk About Kevin
- The Dinner
- Defending Jacob
- Wild by Cheryl Strayed
- The Silent Patient (OMG so boring for 95% of the book)

OMG I hated the entire book. Cannot understand what so many intelligent people I know and respect loved about it, which I clearly just did not get!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You know those books that everyone raves about .... "must reads". And try as you might, and as intellectually stimulating as they are, you just cannot read one more page.

For me it's A Prayer for Owen Meaney (John Irving). I just found it so tiresome.

What's yours?

IS IT BECAUSE OWEN MEANEY TALKS LIKE THIS?

Hahahaha. NP, but my close family members loved this book and raves about it for years. I love most John Irving novels, so I thought I’d love it when I finally read it… Um, no.

[Anonymous]

Untamed by Glennon Doyle! Unreadable.

[Anonymous]

Eat, Pray, Love. Couldn't get even get through the Pray section. Author was extremely unlikable to me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ugh Jonathan Franzen ugh.

I can read Irving, 100 years of Solitude, but this guy is just awful. I think he has some weird hangups that I'm just not interested in entertaining as a captive audience.

I think you are 100% right.

[Anonymous]

The Vanishing Half. Remote narrator, zero passion. Great plot she did not do justice.

[Anonymous]

All non-fiction

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:- Into Thin Air
- The Shack
- In the Woods (though I did feel seen by a recent thread about this book)
- We Need to Talk About Kevin
- The Dinner
- Defending Jacob
- Wild by Cheryl Strayed
- The Silent Patient (OMG so boring for 95% of the book)

See now I liked Silent Patient. Interesting.

NP. I liked Silent Patient, but I liked it because I was interested in the psychology of it. If I hadn't liked that I am certain I would have put it down without finishing. And then the end was a great, not because of a twist--though there was one--but that as you were reading you thought you were reading something different than you were. Basically it wasn't an unreliable narrator as much as an unreliable author who tricked the reader. I loved that aspect of it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You know those books that everyone raves about .... "must reads". And try as you might, and as intellectually stimulating as they are, you just cannot read one more page.

For me it's A Prayer for Owen Meaney (John Irving). I just found it so tiresome.

What's yours?

Funny you mention this. So many people recommended A Prayer for Owen Meany to me. I finally read it a couple months ago and I hated it.

A Gentleman in Moscow is the book everyone loves but I hated. I read it as part of a book club otherwise I probably wouldn't have read more than 100 pages. It was much too wordy and descriptive for my taste. I did not need long descriptions of furniture in a hotel room.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You know those books that everyone raves about .... "must reads". And try as you might, and as intellectually stimulating as they are, you just cannot read one more page.

For me it's A Prayer for Owen Meaney (John Irving). I just found it so tiresome.

What's yours?

IS IT BECAUSE OWEN MEANEY TALKS LIKE THIS?

WHY did he have to speak in all caps?!?!?!? It was awful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:- Into Thin Air
- The Shack
- In the Woods (though I did feel seen by a recent thread about this book)
- We Need to Talk About Kevin
- The Dinner
- Defending Jacob
- Wild by Cheryl Strayed
- The Silent Patient (OMG so boring for 95% of the book)

See now I liked Silent Patient. Interesting.

NP. I liked Silent Patient, but I liked it because I was interested in the psychology of it. If I hadn't liked that I am certain I would have put it down without finishing. And then the end was a great, not because of a twist--though there was one--but that as you were reading you thought you were reading something different than you were. Basically it wasn't an unreliable narrator as much as an unreliable author who tricked the reader. I loved that aspect of it.

I liked the Silent Patient as an easy thriller but hated The Maidens from him.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The Vanishing Half. Remote narrator, zero passion. Great plot she did not do justice.

+1 Just read this and was underwhelmed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Interesting. I tried to get through Owen Meany on at least 2 different occasions and quit. I then picked it up again about 2 years later and couldn't put it down. It became one of my favorites. Same thing happened with A Man Called Ove. When I finally tried it again, I really liked it.

I've had that happen to me many times - I can't get through a particular book at one point only to try it again later and I end up really enjoying it. Sometimes I'm just not in the right frame of mind for a given book, or I just don't connect to it at that point in time.

Having said that, I just don't love some of the classics.

Add A Man Called Ove to my did not like list.

A grumpy old man is grumpy. The end.

I did not warm up to him at all. Tedious little book.

[Anonymous]

Ready Player One.

I’m a huge nerd who was born in the ‘70s. Hated every second of that “novel.” (I put novel in quotes because it’s really a tome of references and recaps of things that I loved about my childhood in pandering format.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:All non-fiction

Have you tried Ron Chernow? He is a good non fiction writer, Hamilton, Washington and Grant were all excellent and read like novels.